In the process of searching for the social structure of the early
Middle Ages (the period in which Central and Eastern Europe
was populated by the Slavs) the investigation of settlement forms
and the mutual relations between their single components stand
to the fore in current Slavic archaeological studies. With regard
to the fact that relevant written sources are small in number (this
is true especially for the first stage of the early medieval period)
it is clear that a decisive role in such process must be played by
archaeology, although it co-operates with a number of other
disciplines.

Settlement forms and material culture were spread by sixth-
century expansion throughout vast territories of Europe. In this
context let me mention the so-called 'Slavic cultural unity', a term
introduced and used by some Czech and Polish post-war scholars.
The idea is that similarities in material culture of territories newly
colonised by the Slavs are considered as relics of a previous
cultural unity and consequently of a unified ethnogenetical evolution. Apart from similar forms and decorative components of
pottery (for example the multiple and single wavy-lines), rites
(cremation), and some kinds of jewels (especially the S-shaped
earrings) it is, most of all, rural residential buildings that, having
been widely scattered in Eastern and Central Europe, may
indicate the original cultural unity of ethnic groups that had
completed their ethnogenesis and started to expand. In the course
of subsequent centuries cultural unity disintegrates step-by-step
because of the internal development of Slavic tribal society and
influence from outside. There are, of course, local differences in

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